A human view of programming languages - Amy J. Ko
In computer science, we usually take a technical view of programming languages, defining them as precise, formal ways of specifying a computer behavior. This view shapes much of the research and development that we do on programming languages, determining the questions we ask about them, the improvements we make to them, and how we teach people to use them. But to many people (even software engineers) programming languages are not purely technical things, but socio-technical things. In this talk, I discuss several alternative views of programming languages, and how these views can reshape how we design, evolve, and use programming languages in research and practice.
The upshot is while the "PL as math" and "PL as tool" views have been well researched, if you're a researcher getting started in this area there is plenty of fertile ground out there. We might just have this view that "PL is math" because we've done the most work there, but there are many more applications of programming languages we have not thoroughly explored enough to say they are not just as important.
